Alex Pietrangelo Could Return This Season with the Golden Knights
Vegas Golden Knights defenseman Alex Pietrangelo isn’t ruling out the possibility of returning to play this season as he recovers from a prolonged hip injury. Pietrangelo, 35, and the Golden Knights announced in June that he would take a break from “the intensity of hockey” to see if his injured hip could improve to the point of having “a normal quality of life.” General Manager Kelly McCrimmon said at the time that the injury “would require bilateral femur reconstruction, with no guarantee of success.” Several reports indicated that Pietrangelo, the team’s number one defenseman, would miss at least the entire 2025-26 season. The defender himself said in June that “the probability is low that my body will recover to the standard required to play.”Pietrangelo commented that the hip problem started years ago, but that last season “is when it really affected me.” He played despite it, skipping the 4 Nations Face-Off to focus on the Stanley Cup playoffs. He played 71 games in total and then another 10 in the postseason, averaging 23:03 minutes of ice time in the playoffs. A 17-year NHL veteran, Pietrangelo led the St. Louis Blues (2019) and the Golden Knights (2023) to Stanley Cup championships. He has 637 points in 1,087 career games. Pietrangelo has two years left on the seven-year contract he signed as a free agent with Vegas in 2020, and it has a cap hit of $8.8 million. The Golden Knights have limited cap space after acquiring star winger Mitch Marner from Toronto with a new contract that has a $12 million cap hit. Vegas will begin the season with Pietrangelo on long-term injured reserve. Recently, the NHL and NHLPA agreed to accelerate changes to the collective bargaining agreement that address player salary cap benefits in LTIR and establish a postseason cap.Nothing is really concrete. I’m just going to keep taking it day by day and see how it goes.
Alex Pietrangelo
